The Ghost Ship fire was an enormous tragedy that still feels like a very fresh collective trauma for the Bay Area community. But Alameda County Sheriff Gregory Ahern used it a few weeks ago to forward a repressive political agenda.

In comments to the Alameda County Board of Supervisors on Feb. 27, Ahern talked about the fire as a justification to win support for Urban Shield. As someone who lost many friends in the fire, which took 36 lives, and was very close to perishing in the blaze myself, I must register my disgust at this blatant opportunism.

Urban Shield is a weekend-long SWAT-team training and weapons expo which has been opposed by activists for years. In the wake of 9/11 the program was proposed as part of an anti-terror response initiative, but it has trained police in tactics that have been used to suppress domestic dissent and encouraged a “warrior cop” culture.

In recent years Urban Shield has attempted to re-brand itself as primarily a “first responder” training for all emergency services. Observers at last year’s event reported that, despite this, the training was still very much rooted in “war games”-style competition between local police departments with the goal of neutralizing threats using heavy weaponry. Every attendee receives a button that says “Blue Lives Matter,” which clearly positions the event in opposition to the modern movement for racial justice.

Alameda County Sheriff Gregory Ahern

It is surreal to think that someone could link this event, which is lined with military grade weapons booths, to anything having to do with saving the lives of our friends — or helping the community deal with the aftermath.

The sheriff claims that only because of the training offered at Urban Shield could the inter-agency cooperation that occurred in the aftermath of the Ghost Ship fire be carried out. The problem with this argument is that Urban Shield is actually standing in the way of programs that are truly focused on this type of work.

Urban Shield has diverted funding away from organizations whose primary mission year-round is to work on disaster preparedness across agencies. One such organization is Collaborating Agencies Responding to Disasters (CARD), which has decades of experience in coordinating this type of event. In 2015, CARD was forced to close its doors because of the Alameda County sheriff’s decision to prioritize funding for Urban Shield.

In Ahern’s statement, he claimed that Urban Shield allowed the police and other agencies to act in a unified manner and to treat the victims “just like they were our own family members.” In fact, information communicated to family members in the critical first night after the fire was kept incredibly vague, with officers unable to accurately indicate who was missing and whether any hospitals were treating victims at the time.

My experience was that it was a massive outpouring from volunteers who were friends and family of the deceased that bore much of the brunt and closed many of the holes in communication that were left by the agencies that were officially involved with disaster relief. The volunteers were able to connect family members, survivors and other impacted individuals with the information and aid they needed.

The aftermath of the Ghost Ship fire shows more than anything how Urban Shield, and the police-centered method it represents, is a direct barrier to a more humane approach to disaster response.

On Tuesday, the Alameda County Board of Supervisors will vote on whether to maintain funding for Urban Shield. Don’t turn this tragedy, and the lost lives of so many of my friends, into a shameless excuse for the escalating militarization of police departments.

Bay Area DJ Nihar Bhatt was entering the Ghost Ship warehouse on Dec. 2, 2016, when the fire broke out. He was also deeply involved with community efforts to centralize and communicate information on the fire and to provide relief to victims.

Alameda County Sheriff Gregory Ahern’s comments connecting Urban Shield training to the Ghost Ship response can be viewed starting at about the 2:58 mark of this video.